You have to wonder why white supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain won’t even acknowledge Barrett Brown’s invitation to an email debate on McCain’s numerous racist connections and statements — when Brown has offered to print the entire unedited email exchange in his upcoming book.

If McCain really has nothing to be ashamed of, this would seem like the perfect opportunity to set the record straight and explain how it is that he happened to meet recently convicted neo-Nazi Bill White at the 2002 meeting of the openly white nationalist group American Renaissance, or why he wrote an article for the American Renaissance website using a name based on a pro-slavery Confederate general, or why he used that same name to post numerous links at Free Republic to racist and neo-Nazi websites and then had all of his posts deleted. To name just three examples; there are many more.

Instead, McCain chooses to sling clumsily written insults at his blog, post obscene comments at other blogs, and dodge all of these issues like a running back hopped up on steroids. It’s kind of amazing that anyone could read his diversionary posts and not see that he never addresses any of this stuff with anything approaching honesty — but of course, that’s far from the only issue about which right wing bloggers are in total denial.

Barrett Brown’s latest piece for True/Slant reiterates his invitation to McCain, and also takes a look at a couple of other blog posts about McCain; Patterico, for one, seems to be almost trying to understand the issues, but can’t help joining the right wing blogosphere groupthink and dismissing the most important points that have been brought up about McCain’s ugly racist views. (With a couple of off-handed insults directed at yours truly, which is all the rage these days. Love you too, guys!)

Here’s Barrett’s post, worth reading as always: A Reply to Donald Douglas and a Restatement of My Offer to R.S. McCain.